By Michael Greene

For the Globe-Times

TULALIP – To celebrate the Spring Equinox, Father Pat Twohy blessed the Medicine Wheel Garden at the Karen I. Fryberg Tulalip Health Clinic this week.

Twohy, an honorary Tulalip Tribes member and former priest of St. Anne’s Catholic Church, has been a part of the tribe for 40 years – attending to blessings, funerals or personal visits to tribal members. As a show of appreciation, Dale Jones officiated over the formal gifting of a pair of moccasins to Twohy. An Elders Advocate for the Diabetes Care and Prevention Program, Jones honored him with a “foot-washing ceremony.” It was done as an example of serving one another by “building each other up in humility and love.” The Wisdom Warriors, a group of elders, made the moccasins and were taught by Shirley Jones, member of the Yakima Nation.

The Medicine Wheel Garden is the latest effort by the Tulalip Tribes to build an integrative medicine practice.

The new garden is in the shape of the medicine wheel of Native American cultures. It mirrors the Four Directions, or cyclical patterns of life: the four changing seasons, the life cycle from birth to youth, adult to death, as well as the mental, physical, developmental and spiritual states of our bodies. Students at the Tulalip Vocational Training Center created the garden boxes. Jennie Fryberg, health information manager for the Tulalip Health Clinic, spoke about the tribes Diabetes Care and Prevention Program and gave recognition to those who helped. “Our hands are up to you for all that you have accomplished,” Fryberg said.

With the collaboration of the Behavior Health, Diabetes and Pharmacy Clinic teams, combined with the Health Clinic, these departments represent the four sections of the medicine wheel. For the tribes to take care of patients as a whole the clinic implemented its model of integrative medicine on the Medicine Wheel, a longtime vision of Karen Fryberg. Marie Zackuse, newly elected chairwoman of the Tulalip Tribes, said: “We are on a good path to become healthy, starting with the young ones, helping our members learn about nutrition and diabetes prevention.”